Podcast:

How many indicators should you use?

In this weekly video:

00:26 – Most traders use indicators incorrectly

01:51 -  Why do you use all of those indicators?

03:26 – Forex indicators and how they can help the trader

04:38 – Pivot points and Support & Resistance levels plotted automatically

05:09 – I don’t like most indicators

06:10 – Don’t clutter your charts

How many indicators should you put on your charts as a Forex trader? Let's talk about that and more right now.

Hi, Forex traders. Andrew Mitchem here, The Forex Trading Coach video and podcast 287.

Most traders use indicators incorrectly

We're going to talk about indicators. Most people use indicators in the wrong way, and most people over-clutter their chance with indicators. They cause confusion and when you start you like to see lots of nice arrows and lines and things on your charts because you think that's what you need to put on your charts in order to give yourself an understanding of what's happening in the market. Now, pretty much that's not true, but, unfortunately, that's the process and the journey that most people, including myself when I started, go through as a Forex trader.

You soon start to realize and discover that most indicators out there aren't actually much good. And you'd know if you'd been listening or watching me for many years, that you'd know that I generally say that I'm not a fan of most indicators out there. Lots of reasons why. The confusion side of things, they lag what's already happened. They tell you what's happened in the past. Most indicators don't really give you much of an indication of what's likely to happen. They all sort of make some form of average over what's already happened. Well, that's too late. People get confused with an indicator saying a buy on this timeframe and a sell on that timeframe. So that causes confusion.

Also, when you actually look into the history of most indicators out there, most of them were written well before the mainstream Forex market was even ... so that people were using them on MT4 platforms, et cetera. So most of them were written for other markets than the Forex market.

Why do you use all of those indicators?

But then, last week somebody wrote a comment on I think it was YouTube, on one of my posts, and said, "Hey, Andrew. You're always telling us you don't like indicators, yet your charts here are full of indicators. What's going on?" Really easy response and reply to that. Well, I find what I use useful. It's the software that I provide to my clients with my coaching course.

But think about it this way, when you're driving a car and you've been driving for any length of time, you know how fast you're going, pretty much. You can tell what speed you're going, roughly, within a few kilometers. If you've got your lights on, you know you'd need your lights on because it's dark. But there's a light inside on the dashboard telling you that you've got your lights on, or the beams on. There's a light in there telling you when your wipers are on. Well, you can see because it's raining and your wipers are moving. But there's still a light there telling you things like that. There's a line there or a needle, dial, moving up and down with the revs that you're going through. Well, if you're revving with your foot down on the pedal, you can hear that the engine's revving faster or you're going uphill. So you kind of know that.

If you're in a manual car or an automatic car and you're changing gears or it does it for, you kind of know what gear you're in. You're on open road, cruising along as the 100 kilometers an hour, you know you're probably in top gear. But there's something on your car that tells you. Why does it do it? Well, it helps to give you an idea of what's happening. It takes the pressure and the workload off the driver. All things like that.

Forex indicators and how they can help the trader

And so, really,